Wisconsin is Larry the Cable Guy's '2nd home'

Jeff Foxworthy, left, and Larry the Cable Guy have been friends since the 1980s. At their co-headlining show Friday at the Resch Center, they'll share the stage at night's end to take questions from the audience.(Photo: Photo courtesy of Jim McGuire)

Dan Whitney is so well-schooled in all things Wisconsin you might think he and his comedic alter ego, Larry the Cable Guy, both hailed from here.

He's been known to sport camouflage with regularity. He’s tailgated outside Lambeau Field. He’s rolled out the barrel at Oktoberfest in La Crosse with his cousins. He’s dropped a line in the lakes near Spooner. He’s helped cook a giant hamburger in Seymour. Just the other week, he dressed up one of his Shetland ponies in a Cheesehead and Packers gear and tweeted a photo.

For the record, however, Whitney is from Pawnee City, Neb. Larry is from Orlando, Fla. Green Bay can’t seem to get enough of either of them.

After spending his annual six-week summer break in Wisconsin with wife, Cara, who is from Sarona in the northern part of the state, and their two kids, Whitney is headed back to the Resch Center for another of his mix-and-match dates with his Blue Collar Comedy buddies. He last played the arena in 2013 with Bill Engvall and returns Friday with Jeff Foxworthy for their We’ve Been Thinking Tour.

“I love coming to Wisconsin. It’s like my second home,” Whitney said by phone from Nebraska, where he has 180 acres that he’s itching to put come cows and pigs on (his wife, not so much). “A lot of friends up there ... Everybody pretty much grew up the way I did, so I think that’s why I get along with everybody.”

There are still those who believe he's a native of New York or Los Angeles who cooked up the character of Larry the Cable Guy, with his Southern drawl, cut-off shirts and good ol’ boy mindset as a way to pander to country folks. It couldn’t be further from the truth, he said.

“I grew up in a town of 1,270. We raised pigs, and I grew up next to a cattle barn. When I grew up, I spent every living second that I was alive loading cattle trucks and hog trucks and hanging out with my buddy, who was an auctioneer. When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was be a cattle auctioneer and drive a pot-belly hog hauler,” Whitney said.

“For all those people who think, ‘Ah, he grew up in an apartment,’ I grew up about as country as you can grow up. I love it. I’m proud of it. It really helped me write material, too. If you’re going to play a character, you have to at least have lived the part.”

This year marks Whitney’s 30th anniversary in comedy. The first time he stepped on the stand-up stage was in August 1985. By May 1988, he had turned professional. His portrayal of Larry the Cable Guy and his “Git-R-Done” catchphrase made him famous.

The lure of Larry is that everyone knows one, Whitney said.

“Everybody has an uncle or a cousin. I have people who come up (and say), ‘Man, you remind me of my dad. You remind me of my uncle. You remind me of my brother-in-law.’ I get that a lot, and that’s because I have the same brother-in-law. I have the same uncle,” he said. “I know it, so that’s why I do it. When I created it, I took about five friends of mine and mixed them all together and that’s what came out.

“He (Larry) thinks just the way you and I do, except he doesn’t really know how to say things in public that are politically correct,” Whitney said. “... I think people have always come across that one person that they really like that they hang out with, but he just does not have a filter.”

Things that come out of Larry’s mouth range from, “You know how I know spring is in the air? The pumpkins on my porch is starting to stink,” to “You know you eat bad during the holidays when your snow angel has a skid mark.” In between, there’s a lot of talk about family adventures at Walmart, Olive Garden and ... the bathroom.

Because Whitney is the guy who breathes life into Larry, there are undeniable similarities between the two.

“(As Larry) I’m a conservative pretending to be an ultra, ultra conservative. That’s really the only way to explain it. So philosophically, I’m not much different than my character. The delivery and the way I act and the way I say things in real life are completely different than the character.”

You can thank Archie Bunker for Larry’s disregard for political correctness. Whitney grew up loving “All in the Family.” He took the groundbreaking and often-controversial 1970s sitcom for what it was — a comedy show.

“Obviously, Archie would say things that there’s no way I would say in public, or I probably disagreed with some of the things he said. I just thought he was funny. I didn’t look too much into the politics of the show, and that’s kind of how I approach my character. I do it because it’s funny and makes people laugh. I really don’t look too much into the politics of what I do. I can separate real life from not real life.”

He isn’t about to let political correctness get in the way of the one-liner comedy he loves.

“That’s why I do the show the way I do the show. I go up and I do jokes that I think are funny that I think my fans will think are funny. For those people that don’t think it’s funny, then they don’t have to go to my show. It’s as simple as that. We live in a free country.”

A self-professed homebody, Whitney spends more time off the road now to ensure that his kids, who grew up on his tour bus, can have a normal childhood. He’s able to pick and choose his tour dates. It’s not by coincidence he does more winter dates in warm-weather states, where he can work in two of his favorite pastimes — golfing and fishing. (He’s a better fisherman than golfer, he says.)

He stays busy with his Prilosec OTC commercials, and he’ll reprise his role as Mater in the third installment of Pixar’s animated “Cars” franchise. There will always be time in his schedule for stand-up.

“I like making people laugh. It’s fun,” he said. “I like it even more now, because the world is so politically correct and people are so bent out of shape, I like it more, because I like going against the grain. I like practicing my freedom that I have in this country. I like going onstage and making people laugh and pissing off the detractors. It’s fun.”

— kmeinert@pressgazettemedia.com and follow her on Twitter @KendraMeinert.

BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW THAT DAN ...

Growing up around hogs and cattle, Dan Whitney has been infatuated with fences and gates since he was a kid. He still is.

“One of my hobbies is, and this is true, I take little Popsicle sticks, and they’re all different sizes ... and I make replica sale barns and feed lots,” he said. “I go out there and I do that. I listen to music and the radio, and I write jokes. When I come up with something, I’ll write it down or put it in my iPhone and I go back to making fences.”

The last one he finished up has a tiny recorder in the sale barn that plays the voice of his auctioneer buddy.